Rotator

Games

puzzle game

SHOW HN2022

659points
195comments
#29of 2,570 in 2022
Top 2%of 2022 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

18 positive, 43 neutral or asking, 8 mixed, 32 critical, out of 101 comments about the project. Thread score -0.14.

Design: 2 for, 17 againstExecution: 4 for, 14 againstIdea: 6 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Fun and challenging game

    From 4 comments
    • This is brilliant! (Especially after the rotating puzzle post yesterday, exactly what I needed!) Thank you! (I managed to get 14 at 8 seconds but damn this is pretty hard)…
      amar-laksh on HN
    • Nice. It’s very fun and quite hard. If you are looking for tweeks consider calling it Shapdle and put them in a row, and color yellow if close and green if right (only slightly…
      evanmoran on HN
    • This is great! I work on visualizations all day and it’s a real skill to interpret size and angle of 3D shapes. 10 seconds per shape on my first play through. I think I would…
      pininja on HN
    • I think this is the first time I realized that wasm wasn't just some kind of funky javascript. Fun game!
      jcims on HN
  • Good spatial reasoning test

    From 2 comments
    • This is great! I work on visualizations all day and it’s a real skill to interpret size and angle of 3D shapes. 10 seconds per shape on my first play through. I think I would…
      pininja on HN
    • 10 shapes 12 sec/shape (2nd try, no brute-force, mobile) 16 shapes (3rd try) 18 shapes (4th try) 24 shapes (5th try, no brute-force) P.S. I had 7 years of art school in addition…
      hexman on HN

Objections

  • Occluded shapes make matching hard

    From 4 comments
    • This is brilliant! (Especially after the rotating puzzle post yesterday, exactly what I needed!) Thank you! (I managed to get 14 at 8 seconds but damn this is pretty hard)…
      amar-laksh on HN
    • Can't wait for blind to be like 'shape rotator score or GTFO'. /s It's a fun game. The difficulty does vary quite drastically accross attempts. Occlusion in particular can be a…
      screye on HN
    • It's hard when part of a shape is hidden even with the rotation.
      1270018080 on HN
    • The shapes often render with extremities occluded, leaving me to random guessing. Maybe render them in a more canonical way so that we can see at least a decent hint at the extent.
      baryphonic on HN
  • Auto rotation is distracting and confusing

    From 3 comments
    • Damn, that's surprisingly difficult. But I think I shouldn't be allowed to brute-force answers (that's really tempting in the current design) and I'd probably appreciate if…
      krick on HN
    • I understand that the shape motion is necessary to reveal hidden parts of some shapes but it found it very distracting. A “freeze” button would have been very helpful,
      jvandonsel on HN
    • This is a fun little game. I find the small movements confusing, though. Maybe a fixed camera (isometric?) would work nice.
      V__ on HN
  • Multiple matching pairs bug, only one accepted

    From 2 comments
    • Small bug: occasionally there are multiple matching pairs, although only 1 works (screenshot: https://ibb.co/JpRp0Pm) Additionally, the auto rotation itself is mostly confusing,…
      svet_0 on HN
    • Pretty weird, the first two are consistently way harder for me! They take 20+ seconds each, and then the subsequent ones take only 3-7 seconds. In my third try I managed 14…
      sudosysgen on HN
  • Brute force guessing is too easy without time penalty

    From 3 comments
    • Looks great! Maybe add a small time penalty for guessing wrong? It's currently way faster for me to try ~7 combinations (takes about 5 seconds per round) than to honestly figure…
      ag8 on HN
    • I know it's not the point, but I find it way easier to just brute force it. Got 31 pairs matched that way (three matches in the last two seconds, even).
      chungy on HN
    • It’s easy to just guess a few times and get it right. At least wrong guesses should have time penalty.
      soheil on HN
  • Poor UX, unclear interface

    From 2 comments
    • great idea but the UX is very poor, it's not intuitive at all
      Shadonototra on HN
    • Just played 5 times, super cool although UX is a bit vague in the first session. What's the max matches you have?
      yablokoffya on HN

Requests

  • Add time penalty for wrong guesses

    From 3 comments
    • Looks great! Maybe add a small time penalty for guessing wrong? It's currently way faster for me to try ~7 combinations (takes about 5 seconds per round) than to honestly figure…
      ag8 on HN
    • It’s easy to just guess a few times and get it right. At least wrong guesses should have time penalty.
      soheil on HN
    • Maybe an advanced mode where extra seconds are deducted for each wrong pair guessed? And along with that the ability to skip a turn for extra seconds deducted. That way, since…
      zuminator on HN
  • Add manual rotation or freeze option

    From 2 comments
    • Small bug: occasionally there are multiple matching pairs, although only 1 works (screenshot: https://ibb.co/JpRp0Pm) Additionally, the auto rotation itself is mostly confusing,…
      svet_0 on HN
    • I understand that the shape motion is necessary to reveal hidden parts of some shapes but it found it very distracting. A “freeze” button would have been very helpful,
      jvandonsel on HN
  • Keyboard shortcuts

    From 1 comment
    • Would you please add keyboard shortcuts? Numbering 1-6 and letting each key toggle a shape would suffice. Repetitive mousing on a non-touch display can trigger RSI flareups.
      sowbug on HN
  • Leaderboard and difficulty levels

    From 2 comments
    • I would suggest also adding some sort of error counting into the mix (perhaps allowing 3-5 lives in total, maybe with bonus lives if you're fast or you get it on the first try).…
      leto_ii on HN
    • This is brilliant! (Especially after the rotating puzzle post yesterday, exactly what I needed!) Thank you! (I managed to get 14 at 8 seconds but damn this is pretty hard)…
      amar-laksh on HN
  • Show correct answer on loss

    From 1 comment
    • I wish it showed you the right answer when you lose. A few times I have sworn there are no matches ;_;
      dataangel on HN

Questions

  • Will it work on mobile?

    From 1 comment
  • Is there a license?

    From 1 comment
    • So cool, I love this! I’d love to play around with it, but I don’t see a license at a glance. If I were to make a variation of this, would I be allowed to share it with…
      steve_adams_86 on HN

Alternatives named

  • Cubism VR

    From 1 comment
    • For VR (Quest/Steam) There is a beautiful minimalistic game called Cubism that uses a similar set of shapes in 3 dimensional space where you need to fit the group of blocks into…
      jimmySixDOF on HN
  • Shaple

    From 1 comment
    • This reminds me of Shaple: https://swag.github.io/shaple
      beliu on HN
  • Zigzag

    From 1 comment
    • A totally different style of game which also seriously stretches spatial reasoning: https://vladimirslepnev.itch.io/zigzag Inspired by Super Hexagon (remember that?), you need to…
      exikyut on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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